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The authors investigate coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) risk factors, suitability of online instruction, politics, and institutions' finances as rationales guiding instructional delivery decisions for fall 2020, after COVID-19's emergence. Contributions include estimating multinomial logit regressions with mode of delivery as a categorical variable, integrating resource dependence and crisis response as theoretical frames, and introducing new predictor variables, including a measure of local residential access to broadband Internet. Findings suggest that county populations, local political preferences, and the percentage of revenue derived from auxiliary enterprises were consistent predictors of delivery mode. Political parties of an institution's governor and congressional representative were predictive of delivery mode for institutions in the lowest tercile of endowment per student but not for institutions in the highest tercile. Bottom-tercile institutions substituted from online to in-person reopening as reliance on revenue from auxiliary enterprises increased, but top-tercile institutions appeared only to substitute from hybrid to in-person or from online to hybrid delivery as revenue from auxiliary enterprises or tuition and fees increased.

How does reassigning students to create schools that are more socioeconomically and academically diverse affect the distribution of educational opportunity? What are the impacts on students who switch schools as a result of these policies? And how do changes in school assignments affect the students who don't switch schools, but who experience changes in their classmates' characteristics? In this article, the authors report the results from two distinct studies of North Carolina's Wake County Public School System, which has a long history of using student assignment policies to weaken the school-neighborhood links that exacerbate school segregation. Their research teams, one based at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) and the other originating at the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University, have worked closely with the district to better understand how student assignment policies affect academic and behavioral outcomes and how changing the demographic characteristics of a student's peers affects learning. They find that, on the whole, school reassignment has somewhat muted effects. In contrast to the sharp criticism and heated controversy that integration programs often inspire, switching schools does not harm students who are reassigned. In fact, reassigned students perform modestly better on statewide tests and are less likely to be suspended. They do find some negative effects for students who switch to schools where achievement and income levels are lower, but these effects are offset by positive impacts for students when school reassignments mean they learn alongside higher-performing and wealthier peers. However, these impacts are small, because, in most cases, students' new schools are largely similar to the schools they left behind. Put another way, the impacts of school integration rely more on the destination than the departure.

This study examines the relationship between campus recreation facility access and first-year retention of full-time, first-time undergraduate students at a public university for 2014-2015 through 2016-2017. Authors examine differences between facility users and nonusers by pairing facility swipe card data with student records. Statistical analysis includes logistic regression and matching approaches, controlling for student demographics, academic preparedness, academic goals, family characteristics, and various environmental factors. Results show a positive and significant relationship between recreation facility use and retention, including 7.1 to 8.4 percentage points higher retention for users versus nonusers, holding other variables constant. Subsample analysis suggests the relationship between recreation facility use and retention differs across student subgroups. Key study contributions include linking card swipe data on facility usage with extensive student records, clearly defining facility users and nonusers, and introducing a new robustness check based on assignment of students to residence halls different distances from recreation facilities.

Over the past few decades, technology has revolutionized the way colleges and universities operate. This study examines the extent to which investments in information technology (IT) are associated with the number and types of higher education personnel. After accounting for time lags between IT funding and personnel changes, we found that increases in IT funding were associated with increases in the number of higher education administrators and IT staff but decreases in the number of clerical workers. Our findings suggest that colleges and universities may be substituting expensive labor (higher education administrators and IT staff) for inexpensive labor (clerical workers).

In recent years, multiple-measures teaching evaluation systems have become widespread in states and school districts around the United States. Using administrative data from Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS) and the National Student Clearinghouse, we examine the relationship between exposure to different ratings of teaching effectiveness in high school (based on a district-wide multiple-measures evaluation system) and high school graduation and college enrollment outcomes. We find a small but statistically significant difference in college enrollment rates for PPS graduates with more courses with teaching with the highest rating of Distinguished, and these students were also more likely to enroll in selective colleges.

This study seeks to update past studies of rural youth by examining college attendance and choice decisions for students who graduated from rural high schools, while also conducting an examination of how the effects of socioeconomic status manifest differently by locale. Logistic regression is used to study the postsecondary attendance and institutional choice for rural students. Data are taken from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. The results reveal clear differences in postsecondary attendance and initial institutional chose for youth from rural locales. Socioeconomic effects also differ for rural and non-rural youth.

Existing research in campus recreation establishes a relationship between facility use and academic outcomes, but published studies define users differently. In response to inconsistent definitions of participants in campus recreation, this study uses a data-driven approach to compare facility use definitions. Authors illustrate the implications of choosing different participant definitions for relationships between campus recreation and two undergraduate academic outcomes, first-year retention and first-year cumulative grade point average (GPA). This study uses data from a three-year timeframe, linking sources of data on students' recreation facility use, academic outcomes, and student records. Authors provide a summary of previous definitions, results from original regression analyses, results for specific student subgroups, and recommendations for defining users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Student participation in higher education governance is commonplace in many countries around the globe. This participation can take many forms, but one prevalent form is through the inclusion of students as members of institutional governing boards, commonly called student trustees. This practice is not without critique with governance scholars often cautioning against student board membership. They cite the potential for student members to engage in representative behaviour, which may lead them to focus primarily on student issues or cast votes which may be in the best interest of themselves or their fellow students as the primary objection to student board members. This study of student trustees in the United States examines the extent to which these individuals engage in such behaviours, examining interactions between student board members and students at their institutions for signs of whether these oft states concerns have a basis in practice.